 |
| https://medium.com/@tess_thorsen/karen-barad-and-sevdaliza-feminist-music-videos-part-1-3b9eda9b5839 |
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2953 - "Human" - Sevdaliza - Music Monday for 2303.20
Since this post is a regular Music Monday post, it is not in the count of the extended 12 post MUSIC WEEK 2023. Number Twelve drops tomorrow.
SEVDALIZA: Throwback to the first time in my life that I actually felt beautiful.
Immortalized by @paulkooiker @leendertcs @laurayard
 |
| https://www.instagram.com/p/CnfF-JBuzly/?hl=en |
https://medium.com/@tess_thorsen/karen-barad-and-sevdaliza-feminist-music-videos-part-1-3b9eda9b5839
In Sevdalizas video, however, the perverse spectator is brought to the center. Rather than scapegoating the act of oppressive sexualization onto animals (and “others” — note the background men in Langs film), Sevdaliza brings them forth and allows us to rest for a long time on their nervous, sweaty, uncomfortable and guilty spectatorship. Furthermore, the male gaze is stretched out through other hungry characters, as if to tell us that we are all guilty of oppressive consumptions (or what bell hooks might call “eating the other”) — or that we may all have internalized the male gaze. Just like that, Sevdaliza turns it around, and the humans are the animals consuming and sexualizing her — the animal insisting it is human.
"Human" - Sevdaliza
"Human"[edit]
Sevdaliza appears to be a satyr and an erotic dancer performing in a semi-abandoned large building with classical detailing in front of an audience sitting on a mezzanine. The audience consists of only men, who are clearly wealthy, being served food and receiving this seemingly private and exclusive performance. The time and place that this is occurring remains ambiguous, mostly because of the mysteriousness of Sevdaliza's semi-mythological character, who is dancing on dirt that has been plowed as in preparation for an animal race. Additionally, her outfit recalls that of Debra Paget in the 1959 film The Indian Tomb, a nod to old Hollywood nostalgia and popular roles women play catering to male sexual desire.[33] The audience members sweat and watch cautiously, as if scared of her. Her video on YouTube is accompanied by the quote, 'the basic human need to be watched was once satisfied by god'. There is an official rendition of the song in Portuguese. The video for Human was directed by Emmanuel Adjei.
https://medium.com/@tess_thorsen/karen-barad-and-sevdaliza-feminist-music-videos-part-1-3b9eda9b5839
And what is that about? Why is Sevdaliza half horse? At first, I thought of it quite literally — the animalism was a play on Sevdaliza striving to be seen as human (literally the lyric of the song) — a simple play on the dehumanization of women (maybe particularly women of colour). But I recently attended a seminar and lecture with Quantum Physicist Karen Barad. My sister introduced me to Barads work years ago, but while attending the lecture a coin dropped — and finally I began to understand some of the links between posthumanist feminist philosophy, queer-theory and Sevdalizas horse legs.
It sounds way out — but it makes me think of Karen Barads text Transmaterialities from GLQ: a journal of lesbian and gay studies — particularly the following quote: “Monstrosity, like electrical jolts, cuts both ways. It can serve to demonize, dehumanize, and demoralize. It can also be a source of political agency. It can empower and radicalize.” Was Sevdaliza radically performing monstrosity?
Applying Barads uses of “both/and” — in which we are asked to consider the materiality of something that is “both” (two separate things) “and” (one whole/the same) at the same time — begs us to consider that the fixedness with which we define bodies (ie. what is Human) might not be the most useful way to think of materiality. One could ask — is Sevdaliza distinctly human and nonhuman but also simultaneously both? If so, Sevdalizas Human video offers a quite literal critique through a use of the posthuman/nonhuman altered body — in other words, her use of the nonhuman and exotified character only briefly dehumanizes and demonizes Sevdaliza, in order to ultimately dehumanize, demoralize and critique the audience, ultimately giving Sevdaliza the empowering radical agency to reflect humanity onto itself through her own (non/)human state.
Search Results
Main Results
 |
| https://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/2020/09/07/sevdaliza-2/ |
“This album represents to me that the essence of it all to me is love,” Sevdaliza explains. “It is a deep letter to myself, my own bible I have to write in order to trust and believe in life. Trust in myself and my character as a human being.”
 |
| https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sevdaliza-the-calling-ep/ |
The Calling isn’t a departure from ISON so much as a distillation in both sound and in genre. The two pejoratives for trip-hop, the coffeeshop and the bedroom, suggest shallow, half-hearted connections with other people, which was always strange for a genre that, at its best, is about extensive self-reflection. And The Calling certainly has that, occasionally to excess. There’s a fair amount of woo to get past, starting in interviews and peaking in “Human Nature” with a sotto voce spoken-word quotation of the guru Osho, whose more salacious teachings are the subject of Netflix’s cult doc “Wild Wild Country.” Once you do, though, the music is well worth it.
Sevdaliza’s voice evokes the best bits of the genre’s greats—Tracey Thorn’s richness, Nicola Hitchcock’s tremolo—while adding distinctive melisma evoking her Iranian roots. Mucky hones his sound further here. Like Arca, his productions often dwell on empty space, and just how far it can expand; “Soothsayer,” in particular, has moments that spool out slowly, very much like parts of Björk’s Arca-produced Vulnicura. The Calling takes the best part of ISON—the strings—and makes them even more abundant and central.
“There’s a woman, she’s every fantasy, and no reality in one,” sings Sevda Alizadeh, better known as Sevdaliza, in “Amandine Insensible.” The song is about one of the musician’s alter egos, a woman named Amandine, who is so lost in her fantasies that she doesn’t care about anything else around her. Just as she takes on several characters (Amandine, Marilyn Monroe, and Zilla—a woman experiencing loss—are a few in her professional realm), Sevdaliza’s personal background too is fragmented. Born in Tehran, the singer—whose ethnic background is Persian, Russian, and Azerbaijani—left Iran with her family to move to Rotterdam at a young age. She went on to play for the Dutch national basketball team in her teens before pursuing a master’s degree in communications. It wasn’t until after university that Sevdaliza honed her sound: a fusion of haunting vocals mixed in with sultry synths and pulsating beats. Through her melancholic lyrics, she investigates identity and transformation.
Like Sevdaliza, Beatrix Ruf landed in the Netherlands as a foreigner. The German curator moved to Amsterdam from Zurich to become the director of the Stedelijk Museum in 2014, the city’s main institution for modern and contemporary art. Her dedication to art and sense for aesthetics have qualified her as one of the most admired museum heads in the world. In 2006, she curated the Tate Triennial, along with a survey of the German artist Isa Genzken, and her collaborators span from the established, like Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone, to the emerging, such as South African artist Zanele Muholi, who opened an exhibition at the Stedelijk in summer of 2017. In their home country this summer, Sevdaliza and Ruf conversed over their common creative ground, discussing the role of identity in art, racism, and migration.
 |
| https://www.documentjournal.com/2018/02/musician-sevdaliza-escapes-expectations-with-curator-beatrix-ruf/ |
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2303.20 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2817 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
No comments:
Post a Comment